Grow & Glow With Andele Lara
Water, carbon dioxide, sunlight, and oxygen are what a flower needs in order to bloom. This process of photosynthesis is what represents Andele Lara. The social media influencer and blogger uses her platform to empower women by helping them reach their full potential through self love and care. Our Sisters had the opportunity to catch up with the born and raised Boston native. We talked sisterhood, self-love/care tips, her inspiration behind her blog: Glow & Grow, plus more.
1. What does women empowerment mean to you?
Women empowerment to me means...strength. I think when women get together and we empower each other, I think that we can change the world. Just by uniting together and standing strong together. When we are not united together, I find that there’s a lot of difficulties; there's more stress. It’s like sisterhood in a sense when we empower each other to do better and be great.
2. How do you define sisterhood?
I think sisterhood is, I would define it as unity. And again, I want to touch on the word strength again because I find that with me personally, with my own sister, and then the sisterhood I have with friends, the sisterhood that I have with family, the sisterhood that I have with people that I just meet. It's always positive. It's always strong. It's always powerful. We’re always just together and moving each other up, and pushing each other forward. And I think that that's very, very important especially in this day and age where social media is a huge influence on our lives, and we’re just meeting people. I think sisterhood ties it all together. As soon as you see another sister it's like, “It's so nice to see another women here!”
3. What advice do you give to young girls living in this internet age with all that we see on social media?
I would tell them to love themselves more, most importantly. I know that me personally, growing up I had to go through my own difficult times to get to where I am today. But I would never discredit or regret anything I’ve done in the past because it's molded me into who I am today. I always tell little girls to love yourself first and figure out yourself before allowing anyone else to come into your life as far as men. And I would say to dream big.
4. What inspired Grow & Glow?
Grow & Glow was inspired by me personally, as a person I dealt with my own insecurities. I dealt with my own limiting beliefs. I dealt with a lot of...most of the things came from me and I didn’t know I was personally attracting all of these things that were happening in my life. At the time, I was uncontrollable, so I personally did a lot of mental work, a lot of self-searching, a lot of really like digging to find out what I really liked and what I didn't like, and how I can create the best life for myself. So I started a platform as a way to inspire others. Just little reminders, there’s messages that come out every Friday that just have little reminders as far as happiness, as far as what you can do yourself, through affirmations to build yourself up and to create the life that you want for yourself.
5. What are some of your self-care/love tips?
So my daily routine is when I wake up, I wake up to an alarm clock, because I do still work a full time job, but I hope to eventually not work a full time job. But I’m grinding in that stage right now, but when I wake up the first thing I do is really like meditate and kind of reflect on the day before I move forward with the day. So I’ll just sit there and just kind of think everything before, just quickly say things that I’m grateful for. After that, I go and I...I recorded some affirmations of myself. I have 3 affirmations that I’ve recorded. I think one is called “Know Yourself,” one is called “Dream Big” or “Nothing's Going To Stop Me,” and basically I play it because the more you play it, the more it seeps into your subconscious. So sometimes, like I didn't notice they were working until randomly someone will ask me a question, and I’ll say exactly what's on the recording, so it's kind of scary, but I noticed that after doing that, I felt like one of them was “nothing can stop me” and I felt so empowered that day, so I’m like “Oh no, I have to keep doing this.” And then throughout the day, I just kind of like self-check, and just really like, “Ok, Andele, what are you doing? How do you feel?” And then for like beauty and things like that I do face masks, I really enjoy those. I like honey and sugar scrubs, and just really like love on myself in a sense, and make sure that I have a really good balanced diet because if I am not full, I’m just a completely different person. So I make sure that I’m eating well, that I have a nice breakfast, a good lunch, and a good dinner. And a lot of water because those really, as much as you don’t think about it but, skipping breakfast, it really does effect your mood. Like your body doesn’t have the energy it needs to, to actually do what you want to do. Diet is a huge, huge step.
6. Is there anything else you’d like to add?
I do want to let all women, I want to remind them to continue to dream big. So sometimes we feel like we’re out of control, or sometimes we feel like things aren’t going our way, but out of those tough times, is when you blossom. So think of us like the flower that I mention on my blog where it's like the flower is growing in the dirt and it's so dark, and it doesn’t know what is coming out, but still, it continues to grow and then it blossoms into that beautiful daisy that we see. So despite whatever it is I think that we should always continue to push forward and as well as empower other women that are doing it too. Compliment another girl. Tell her that she looks beautiful today or tell her how intelligent that you think she is. I think that continuing to give out inspiration into the world, you kind of get it back within yourself, so always be in a giving mindstate despite what anyone else tells you to do. And dream big. And Grow & Glow.
Check out Andele’s blog: growandglow.life
Be sure to follow her on IG: @andelelara
